Adding and Subtracting

I don't know if this is true, but let's pretend it is:

There are only two ways to create art. You can add. You can subtract.

Adding is what painters do. They add paint onto a canvas.

Subtracting is what sculptors in marble do. They subtract marble from a block.

Photography is subtraction. In taking a photo, you subtract the outside of a field of view, leaving only the centre behind. Alternatively, photography subtracts the options of changing your point of view. A viewer of a scene IRL can yaw, pitch, or roll their head. They can change the focal length of their gaze. They can move around. They can jump up and down if they want to. The viewer of a photograph of the same scene can't change what they see in the photograph in any of the same ways. Where did the options go? The photographer subtracted them.

Animation, usually, is additive. This is truest in animations made up of paintings or drawings, as in cel animation. Everything in such an artwork was added by some person. There are no accidents in these arts. We should view them as a conspiracy theorist views the world, that is, we should view everything in them as happening for a reason.

Going back to photography as subtracting options from a viewer, the same is true of film. Film is actually even more restrictive than photography. At least the photographer leaves the viewer the option of what to look at next. Film does not. A film is always ready to suggest the next thing for you to look at, i.e., its next frame. Yes, you can look away from a film, but there's no sharp line between nudges and coercion, and film is on one side of that spectrum.

Actually, I should clarify. Uncut film is subtractive. A sequence of film with cuts is more additive. An unedited sequence of film is made up of photos, and inherits their subtractive nature. An edited sequence of film is more additive. The editor, as opposed to the filmmaker, adds new bits of film to previous bits to make a sequence, like laying down a train track. As an individual length of rail is made of iron, while an entire track is made of lengths of rail, edited film is made of film, while unedited film is made of photos. Of course the editor also subtracts—cutting is subtracting—but the offcuts don't make up their own work of art.

Let me turn on myself. What about relief printing (linocut, woodblock printing)? You paint (add) a design to a block, then carve (subtract) around the design, then (add) ink (to) the carved block, then (add) the ink to the final page. I think, again, it depends on what outputs are works of art. The inked block is not a work of art, at least not unless it's hung in a gallery. The carved block is not usually a work of art, though it is a record of art-making. Only the final prints are works of art, so relief printing is additive, though what relief printers add to paper are records or images of subtraction.

Writing, so far, has been additive, though this is beginning to change. Writing is normally a process of adding words one after the other in a sequence, like I'm doing now. AI changes this. For a human, "writing" with AI doesn't start with the blank page, or the first word. It starts with something fully-formed, like a marble block, or a series of such blocks, and proceeds by cutting away, by discarding, the words and blocks of text you do not wish to keep.

For this reason, we can't be paranoid in our interpretation of AI-human hybrid-writing (though we can with pure AI slop).

As it makes no sense to interpret the outcome of a football game as expressing a single, unified will (or unified conspiracy of such wills)—who wanted the game to end in a 1-1 draw?—it makes no sense to scry the deep intent of human-edited AI slop. Like competitive games and legal trials, it is a product of compromise, contest, and circumstance. Again, though, it can be worthwhile to look for hidden meanings in pure AI writing; see Janus et al.